Talent screening and pre-employment assessment

Pre-employment assessment for African employers

CVs do not predict performance, and unstructured interviews do not either. A bank reviewing 500 graduate applications has no consistent way to rank them, and a board appointing a director often has nothing beyond a panel interview. Carthena Talent Screening gives employers a structured, objective assessment that ranks candidates on what predicts performance, and produces output that HR can act on and an executive committee can approve.

Carthena built the platform after seeing the same problem across its advisory work: sound strategies and solid operations undermined by the wrong people in critical roles.

Graduate screening

Graduate screening is built for high-volume intakes. Candidates complete four timed sections in about 70 minutes:

• Critical reasoning: 15 numerical, verbal and logical questions in 30 minutes, weighted at 40 percent.
• Situational judgement: 12 workplace scenarios in 20 minutes, weighted at 35 percent.
• Behavioural profile (DISC): 24 forced-choice blocks in 10 minutes, used for placement guidance and never scored.
• Role-specific knowledge: 8 to 10 questions calibrated to the role and sector, weighted at 25 percent.

HR receives a branded spreadsheet ranking every candidate by composite score, with the result for each section.

Professional assessment for senior hires

Experienced professionals are not assessed with graduate reasoning tests. The professional tier combines the DISC behavioural profile with 8 to 10 senior, scenario-based questions calibrated to director, head of department or specialist level. Each candidate receives an individual PDF report with the DISC profile, score, integrity summary and a clear recommendation: Recommended, Consider or Not Recommended.

Integrity and anti-cheating controls

Online assessment is only useful if the results can be trusted. Every section runs with tab-switch detection, copy-and-paste blocking, enforced timers and session logging, and every integrity event is recorded in the candidate's results. Candidates sign in through a secure emailed link, with no passwords or app downloads, and progress saves continuously, so a dropped connection does not cost them their attempt.

Built for volume

The platform screens up to 800 candidates in 72 hours. Employers upload candidate lists by spreadsheet, invitations go out in controlled batches, and HR tracks completion in real time. One employer can run assessments for several roles at once, each with its own candidates, questions and results, and each client's data is kept separate from every other's.

Why structured assessment works

Structured assessment works because every candidate is measured on the same criteria, under the same conditions, and scored the same way. That removes much of the room for bias, networks and presentation skills to stand in for ability, and gives employers a defensible record of how each decision was made. For graduate intakes, it lets HR rank hundreds of candidates in days and spend interview time only on the strongest. For senior hires, it gives the panel independent evidence to weigh alongside the interview, rather than relying on the interview alone.

Free DISC assessment

Anyone can take Carthena's free DISC assessment to see their own behavioural profile: how they communicate, make decisions and work with others. It is the same DISC instrument used in the platform.

How an engagement runs

1. Configure. Carthena sets up the client account, the assessment tier and the role-specific questions.
2. Invite. The client uploads its candidate list and invitations go out in batches.
3. Assess. Candidates complete timed sections from any device, with integrity controls throughout.
4. Decide. The client downloads ranked results or individual reports, ready for the hiring decision.

The platform is not self-serve: Carthena manages every client relationship directly. See how the platform works.

Why Carthena

Carthena Advisory has completed more than 70 projects in 12 sectors, and built Talent Screening for the realities of African hiring: large graduate intakes, uneven connectivity and committees that need clear recommendations rather than raw scores. Assessments are calibrated for African employers and priced for in-house HR teams, rather than imported from markets that hire 10 people at a time.